Arhitektura Krušec: Wooden House, Mengeš, Slovenia

About what led to the development of the compact house and the attempt by architects Krušec to reopen and disassemble it, while giving back to certain elements and construction the meaning they hold in an architectural composition.

Photo credits: Miran Kambič

Photo credits: Miran Kambič

Compact House

In 1999, Nande Korpnik designed the Acman House in Griže, thus introducing the concept of a compact house to Slovenia. However, I am borrowing the term here from a much later case – the compact house in the Karst by Dekleva Gregorič arhitekti. I am using it with reference to those family houses where the material (and detail) of the façade mantle is used continuously both on the façade and the roof, which creates a uniform volume without differentiation between individual architectural elements.

Stane Bernik says of the Acman House that it acts above all as a sign and that “the house actually consciously forces its presence onto the visual landscape and acts more or less as an aggressive sign”. 1In this sense, one might understand Korpnik’s house as a formal reinterpretation of urban requirements, which manifests itself in the abandon of the local building tradition. The radicalism, which triggered Bernik’s statement, is visible in the photos published in the professional media. The white compact volume stands next to a typical Slovenian hayrack. The tradition of construction and assembly of a building from the local material is now replaced by a façade mantle which is no longer bound to the context.

The complete article is published in Autumn 2019 issue of Piranesi No. 41/Vol. 27.